At different moments the city became fertile ground for a clash between two different points of view: the ones against the massive caravan, and the ones in support of the Central Americans. But one thing is for sure, it was a challenging situation both for the local government, the federal government, and for the bilateral relations between Mexico and the United States. The aftermath of the caravan of November 2018 is still ongoing today. It finds in-between novel and different hazards, such as the SARS-CoV-2 (covid-19 or coronavirus) pandemic. In Tijuana people arrived to the city on November 10, 2018. There were many nuances and implications around it. In a couple of weeks, Mexico had turned into a political chess board.

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Surprisingly, in this game it was not the king who was cornered. Furthermore, and as it usually happens in chess games, many pieces perished. Some pieces survived, other just remained, and some other more, without never being in danger, just looked from afar taking notes of how the match was developing. Some others were just benefited from circumstances. Many of the characters were desperados, a piece that will inevitably be captured. It’s foreseeable that it will

happen sooner or later, so the balance of this known destiny lies upon learning at what cost the capture will happen. Trying is the only choice.

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This political chess game, grounded in the migratory situation, caused some illegal moves, often committed, ironically, by the so called “representatives of legality”. Many of the pieces in this game moved slowly, step by step, kilometre by kilometre. Some of them, the pieces that always are moved first were trying to achieve a promotion in the US, some others, even before they started to move they were thinking in Mexico as their final destination. This group could be counted in a smaller number, but still represented a game-changer. A particular characteristic of this smaller group is that they didn’t wanted to move from their place of origin in the first place, but structural and systemic violence and poor livelihoods forced them to do so. These are the people that have only one choice of movement: it’s going straight, going north. One step at a time. Despite the differences of their original reasons to flee, and leave their countries, as the case may be, all of them faced the same challenges: a very well elaborated tactic full of threats, traps, and, in most of the momentums, unexpected surprises. More often than not, most of the major actors found themselves in Zugzwang, a situation in which they are compelled to make a move, in spite of the hopelessly blunder that that move will turned out to be.

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That November 10, 2018, a group of 84 LGBTQ+ Central Americans arrived in Tijuana. The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and the National Migration Institute (INM) received the group of LGBTQ+ and settled them in a house located in Playas de Tijuana, a middle-class neighbourhood in the city. The swift and unexpected location in which this group was settled in caused unease among the neighbours, who eventually called for a demonstration against the caravan. Certainly the public opinion was divided, as not everyone agreed with the generalisation that the Central Americans were criminals.

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The escalation of the tension in Playas de Tijuana escalated to the degree of a massive fight between the neighbours of the community and the Central Americans from the Caravan, who were accused of putting in danger the safety of the neighbourhood and the city with their presence around. “It’s not racism nor xenophobia. We’re doing this because we’re concerned for the safety of our children and community”, argued the local neighbours. The message was very clear and explicit. “We don’t want you here”.

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They didn’t want strangers or foreigners wandering around their neighbourhood. They thought that the safety of their children and their neighbourhood was going to be better without the

presence of the migrants, refugees and asylum claimants. They thought it was a better that way. People also argued that the caravan was manipulated, that there was no way in which such a large number of people ―UNHCR estimated that around 16,000 people entered to Mexico at different times, and in different groups, of the five Caravans that trekked across the country between October – November 2018― organised themselves to start such a complex and dangerous trek all the way from Central America. It’s interesting to note that these are the very same arguments that the US president Donald Trump, and afterwards, the Mayor of Tijuana, Juan Manuel Gastélum, claimed and disseminating through social media.

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The situation of discrimination was such that Mexican federal government launched a campaign against xenophobia, in coordination with the UNHCR. In that regard, Silvia Garduño, Public Information Officer from the UNHCR Mexico stated that “unfortunately, episodes such as the so-called "caravans" in Mexico, promote xenophobic attitudes against migrants and refugees, especially due to the images broadcasted by some media. In this situation, UNHCR has sought alliances with key partners, from the government, civil society and other United Nations agencies, to develop messages and campaigns that contribute to tackle discriminatory messages and generate empathy towards this population. We know that refugees, when given the opportunity can contribute to the society that receives them, and Mexico has several historical examples of this”.

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After the arrival of the caravan in Tijuana, the Mexican Refugee Commission (COMAR) announced the opening of a new centre of attention, to process asylum claims in Tijuana.

 

Violence, the everyday bread in the North of Central America

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It is known that Honduras and El Salvador, located in the North of Central America, have the highest rate of homicides per capita. InSight Crime reported that El “Salvador logged 3,340 homicides in 2018”, which means that were 51 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

Its neighbor Honduras, registered 40 per 100,000, which translates into “Honduras saw 3,310 murders, according to the Observatory of Violence at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras – UNAH)”.

 

“These persistently high levels of violence, the rule of ver, oír y callar – see, hear and shut up – and frequent impunity have led to a situation in which violence is normalised and has become a mode of communication, according to Vickie Knox, Lecturer in International Human Rights and Refugee Law, at the School of Advanced Study at the University of London.

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However, she claims that violence in Central America is a multicausal phenomenon. “They’re not just about violence and they're not just about crime, especially in Honduras, they're also about, authoritarianism. In Honduras, and Guatemala, and also in Mexico, of course, displacement is caused by violence linked to mega projects”

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The violence in Central America is high. There is no doubt about that. It is higher that it should be. According to Ben Parker, from The New Humanitarian, Honduras and El Salvador are among the top 5 deadliest countries for civilians in the world.

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It is important to take into consideration that these Central American countries are not facing an open war such as Syria, South Sudan or Burkina Faso. In spite of this, people both from El Salvador and Honduras are not external to being sieged in their own neighbourhoods. They are not external to not being able to wander around their own houses, because it may represent a mortal mistake stepping into the wrong territory.

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Violence has become everyday-bread. San Pedro Sula, capital of Honduras, hosts the most deadly areas of the country, in which the freedom to transit is a right people don’t even dare to fight for. Violence has become the normality. According to the Salvadoran Sociocultural Anthropologist Juan José Martínez, Rivera Hernández, one the deadliest places in the San Pedro Sula “is fought over by an ever-changing number of gangs: sometimes it’s seven, sometimes six, and sometimes eight. Small gangs are extinguished and new ones are born with the velocity of bullet shots”.

 

The President of the United States Towards the Caravans

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Xenophobia. Racism. Aporophobia. Segregation. These are manifestations of discrimination that are present. They are like sleeping monsters. Sometimes they are weak, sometimes, they are subtle, sometimes they are devastating, and sometimes they are asleep. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, swiftly converted the Viacrucis Migrante of April 2018, which takes place on Easter every year since 2011, into a threat for national security. Since then, Trump started to promote his image and position himself in a place that would favour him for the mid-term elections of 2018. He was relying on a new element that had not been used before in this kind of situation regarding migration. The way to do it was tweet by tweet. Every tweet represented a move that got him closer to winning the mid-term elections. When the president of the most powerful country in the world declares a group of marginalised people as a national threat, the media has to step up and analyse the inconsistencies of such a statement.

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As a response to this, and to dissuade people from crossing the border Trump ordered the setting of fence wire to prevent people from crossing the border once the caravan had reached the north of Mexico.